SEA99LA143 · Cessna 210B
Cessna 210B · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE) to William R Fairchild International Airport (CLM)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99LA143
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 210B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 210
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N9588X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE), Everett, WATo William R Fairchild International Airport (CLM)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Initial climb
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Landing gear, main gear attachment › Fatigue
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, not detected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After takeoff, the left main landing gear would not lock in the 'up' position. The pilot was subsequently unable to get the left main gear into either the up-and-locked or down-and-locked positions, despite repeated efforts to do so. After burning down fuel, the pilot performed a successful landing in grass next to the runway at his destination with the left main gear unlocked, sustaining only slight additional damage in the landing. Post-accident examinations disclosed a fatigue fracture with at least three separate origins in the left main landing gear saddle (a structural component that mounts the gear strut to the airframe), and fatigue cracks in the right main gear saddle. Both main gear saddles were dye-penetrant inspected for cracks in accordance with AD 76-14-07R2 approximately 3 weeks/30 flight hours before the accident with no defects found.
Probable cause
The failure of maintenance personnel to detect cracked main landing gear saddles during required inspection, and subsequent fatigue fracture of the left main landing gear saddle resulting in separation of the saddle and disabling of the left main gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99LA143
- Event ID
- 20001212X19652
- Case number
- SEA99LA143
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-08-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 20a77375e6a98507cf731edc14f9eba9f6d7094c571ff70d13affe01473cfbd6; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:18:07.729Z.